Any chance "daily" maintenance could change to "weekly" someday?
I haven't played a ton of different games but this is the only one I've ever seen that required daily maintenance.

Part of what happens during the Daily maintenance is the spawn locations of all of the resource nodes are scrambled around, so everything changes position on each map (so as to prevent bots from running scripts and players camping the same area over an over). As a result, I don't think they will ever get away from "some" daily downtime (unless this process is reconfigured in some way) however they may be able to get faster and faster as time goes on.

Any chance "daily" maintenance could change to "weekly" someday?
I haven't played a ton of different games but this is the only one I've ever seen that required daily maintenance.

Part of what happens during the Daily maintenance is the spawn locations of all of the resource nodes are scrambled around, so everything changes position on each map (so as to prevent bots from running scripts and players camping the same area over an over). As a result, I don't think they will ever get away from "some" daily downtime (unless this process is reconfigured in some way) however they may be able to get faster and faster as time goes on.

I'm not a programmer but it doesn't seem like a huge deal to have a spawn location randomly move... perhaps instead of having an empty node it could disappear completely and respawn randomly. Daily seems excessive to me, I think some games are up 24/7 for months without any downtime.

I rarely try to log in around maintenance time because it's in the middle of my sleepy time... If it was in the middle of my playtime I would have quit playing long ago.

They should at least vary the time a bit so they are interrupting different peoples playtime instead of the same ones all the time. Avoid Peak hours of course but Off Peak is a long time to play with.

I love it when people begin these opinions with "I'm not a programmer but..."

So here's the deal. This is a PVP game -- you're asking Sandbox to groom the landscape by moving assets (resource nodes) on a constant basis, and that produces lag on each and every zone, as though we were playing something more akin to a voxel game like Second Life, Trove, Roblox or Minecraft or something. Each and every moment. Without knowing who is in the middle of what mayhem. Changeable destructible environments like that really mess with asset server performance, just the opposite of what you want to do with a PVP game. So games like this and Eve refresh daily so we're saved from that voxel game effect, even though we're changing the environment all the time and they want to change the nodes. It's a compromise among "treasure hunting," anti-bot, and performance optimization.

So they can interrupt your bloodshed for 40 minutes once a day so you can catch a little real life on a schedule, or they can listen to you whine about how you died because of lag and it was the game's fault, because 40 minutes out of your day for real life for their asset server is not worth a reasonably smooth performance for everyone.

Be a little community minded, and let us all kill and die efficiently all day, except that 40 minutes. That's what we're here for isn't it?

Eve Online goes down daily and I don't really remember a lot of those folks complaining that it's a hardship. Spend that time in the meta game. Study builds. Read forums. Watch YouTube. Heck, create some content. Talk to you guild about upcoming plans and visit your guild forums. (Wo)Man does not live by grind alone.

Shava
programmer since 1970-something, 1964 if you count my first cardstack

I love it when people begin these opinions with "I'm not a programmer but..."

I'm not a programmer but have done a little programming. Since you resurrected a dead thread I'll respond.

So here's the deal. This is a PVP game -- you're asking Sandbox to groom the landscape by moving assets (resource nodes) on a constant basis, and that produces lag on each and every zone, as though we were playing something more akin to a voxel game like Second Life, Trove, Roblox or Minecraft or something. Each and every moment. Without knowing who is in the middle of what mayhem. Changeable destructible environments like that really mess with asset server performance, just the opposite of what you want to do with a PVP game. So games like this and Eve refresh daily so we're saved from that voxel game effect, even though we're changing the environment all the time and they want to change the nodes. It's a compromise among "treasure hunting," anti-bot, and performance optimization.

What does it already do? When a node is flattened it changes the graphic from a non-flat to flat. After a random time it changes from flat graphic to non-flat graphic. What is easier when gathered, changing from one graphic to another or from a graphic to no graphic? How much of a drain on the system is adding a graphic in a random location instead of changing from one graphic to another? Because of the random window size it is unlikely that more than 1 or 2 would change within the same second.

So they can interrupt your bloodshed for 40 minutes once a day so you can catch a little real life on a schedule, or they can listen to you whine about how you died because of lag and it was the game's fault, because 40 minutes out of your day for real life for their asset server is not worth a reasonably smooth performance for everyone.

So I seriously doubt there would be any increase in the already horrible lag in this game.

Be a little community minded, and let us all kill and die efficiently all day, except that 40 minutes. That's what we're here for isn't it?

Not only could changing the spawn method cut back on daily maintenance, if that was the only reason for daily maintenance, it would also make life more difficult for bots.

Eve Online goes down daily and I don't really remember a lot of those folks complaining that it's a hardship. Spend that time in the meta game. Study builds. Read forums. Watch YouTube. Heck, create some content. Talk to you guild about upcoming plans and visit your guild forums. (Wo)Man does not live by grind alone.

As I said already, I'm usually asleep during the down time so it really doesn't bother me. If it was in the middle of my playtime I would find another game.

Shava
programmer since 1970-something, 1964 if you count my first cardstack

I'm really not impressed by professional programmers. Here's a short story for you. 1. Non-Programmer suggests small change to program we are having developed. 2. Programmer says "can't be done". 3. Non-Programmer writes 2 lines of code performing requested action and gives to programmer.4. I lose all respect for professional programmers.